So what’s it like working at our marketing agency in Edmonton? Truthfully, it’s incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging at the same time.

Over the past years our company was growing exponentially, so we just built our new studio this year, moved our entire staff over, expanded our team to serve our clients better. Throughout the expansion we have been meeting our deadlines for our clients for their marketing campaigns and product & service launches.

PRO-TIP: The #1 thing I tell clients when they come to our company is that as long as we plan well, we can plan on success!

Magic Pill For Marketing

There is no “magic pill” to marketing. I would argue that good advertisements go a long way to reaching the correct demographic and converting them over, but the true key ingredient to any creative agency worth their salt is: planning.

Facebook & Google Advertising

I’ve been at this almost a decade and in that time I have been at the forefront of changes in advertising, from tradition to digital, and even more challenging are the micro changes in platforms such as Google and Facebook. Google once was a dominant giant in keyword advertising with Google Adwords and Youtube, but recently we have seen Facebook taking over the advertising marketplace significantly. I’m sure by this time next year we will be talking about the significant changes Google is making to help with more effective advertising funnels for their customers (they just changed the named of “Google Adwords” to “Google Ads” as an example).

To be successful on these platforms you can use them independently, where conversions are taking place right on the social media platforms or you can use these platforms in tandem with your website as a sales and conversion portal.

PRO-TIP: I get a lot of questions about SEO…The #1 most important SEO tool is your very own website. Buying “SEO” services such as link building and article creation make no sense if the website itself does not have native SEO built into the site.

Against the Creative Clock

A lot of times our customers come to us after have been burnt by a previous marketing process. We look at their existing website and funnels to find it is simply not geared towards converting their clients. What makes the process even that much more difficult, is sometimes these clients can be significantly against the clock and need results even quicker due to lost time trying other marketing practices through agencies they used to partner with.

All hope is not lost if you are in that situation… the great thing, is we can use advertising through social media and keep the customer converting directly on the platform and not send them to an unoptimized website. You may have seen things like “lead forms” and “messenger” being a more common way to generate leads.

PRO-TIP: we use it ourselves and it works splendidly.

#1 Question I Get In Marketing:

So here is the biggest complaint I hear about marketing and advertising: “If Facebook and Google have made these processes more and more easy to use for the average consumer then why doesn’t it work for me?”

Well, there are nearly limitless minor reasons, but it all comes down to 2 major factors:

The Ad

The Audience

Let’s talk about “the ad” first. Most advertisements I see out in social media land are created at very low cost, with very little planning, and end up falling short. The truth of the matter is a lot of people out there are doing the same thing: “Hey, here is my business… we are great… do business with us.” These ads are being lost in a sea of content. They are not converting because people skate right past them. To make a great ad we must keep the audience in mind but also factor in what is going to make someone stop what they are doing, take time out of their day, and connect with your business. A truly great advertisement is one that evokes emotion: (1) laughter, (2) passion, (3) sadness, (4) intelligence, and yes, even (5) concern.

This may sound simple, but it is not. Crafting a unique, captivating, sensation advertisement is the most challenging part of our business. It takes time, it takes planning, it takes testing, and most of all patience.

Now, let’s talk about “the audience.” It doesn’t matter what platform you advertise with, you can easily identify your demographics. A lot of the problems I see when clients come to us with their ineffective campaigns is that either their audiences were too broad or too narrow (missing people). Let’s say for example you are in the concrete repair business. You can easily target people who have been recently looking for this service (through Google) and convert quite effectively with the right advertisement. On the flip side, you can “proactively” seek and search out these customers (through Facebook) and by getting your demographics just right and enjoy a low cost to conversion.

PRO-TIP: it’s relatively easy to target users on Google who are looking for a particular product or service; the cost can be quite high (I feel so much empathy for a business like real estate, ouch $$$$). It’s a bit tricker on Facebook, because you can massage your demographics, but the real magic is in an effective advertisement.

Video Production Matters! Quality Matters!

I think this needs to be stated. Yes, there are a lot of cat and viral videos out there that get tens of millions of views that are low quality. Unless your business has proprietary footage of an amazing cat, an act of God, or something else you might want to rethink a low quality strategy of advertising with your cell phone video. This ad here is a prime example of what we did.

So What Should I Look For In A Marketing Agency?

Well I’d like to come right out of the gate and say “choose us”, but it’s quite alright if you don’t. The most important thing you should look for in a marketing agency is that they can show you results. Many creative agencies or video production companies out there can show you great images, videos, and ads they created, but the question you should be asking for is: “show me the results” or if you feel real cheeky “show me the money!” <- If you didn’t catch the reference, you may have not grown up watching Jerry Maguire… I think I still have the VHS copy if you want to borrow it.

Cheers,

Matthew Altheim
Executive Producer

Nordic Media
www.nordic.media

About Nordic Media

We are a full-service marketing agency focusing on stunning and captivating creative assets and video production that move people to do business with the clients that chose us to compete for their business online and offline.